Valley task force ramps up ways to find abducted kids

A bloodhound picked up the trail of a missing 10-year-old girl by sniffing her jacket, shoe and sock, evidence left behind in a women's restroom at Gilbert's Freestone Park.

Soon, "Freddy" was pulling his handlers from the state Department of Corrections down a dirt path, his sensitive nose pushed to the ground until he came to a grassy wash near some overhead electrical wires, behind a softball field.

Moments later, the drill by the new Child Abduction Response Team last week came to a happy ending. Kennadie, the daughter of a Gilbert police detective and not a real victim, happily petted Freddy after he found her sitting under a tree. (Police asked that her last name not be published because her father is a police officer.)

The drill was required for federal certification of the team, a new task force of 14 police agencies and the brainchild of a Gilbert detective who was concerned about his own department's flawed response to a missing-persons case that proved to be a hoax.

Missing-persons detectives from the Mesa Police Department's Center Against Family Violence participated in the drill, along with at least seven Chandler police officers and civilian employees. The Tempe and Phoenix police also are team members.

The concept is simple: to flood a crime scene with as many detectives as possible to run down leads, canvass a neighborhood and do background checks that could include checking the number and location of convicted sex offenders in a neighborhood, or which sex offenders have been released from prison in the past few months.

Although the team has yet to obtain the certification, it responded to the disappearance of 5-year-old Jhessye Shockley in Glendale, with 58 officers assisting the Glendale police for two days.

Jhessye disappeared Oct. 11. Police are unsure if the girl walked away from her mother's apartment or if she was abducted while her mother ran an errand.

"I think the missing little girl in Glendale underscores the need" for the task force, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said. "There's always going to be a need as long as children are at risk. No matter what we do as parents, there are always going to be predators out there looking for a narrow window to take advantage of them."

In any major criminal case, the initial 24 hours are the most critical in tracking down a suspect, but child abduction cases have a much shorter window for survival, said Jim Walters, a consultant with the U.S. Department of Justice and assistant police chief at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Studies have found that in child abductions that end in homicide, 76 percent of victims were killed within the first three hours of their disappearance, he said.

"That's why it's so important to get the resources. . . . Time and distance are the principal components you are working against," Walters said.

Distance is important because many abductors attempt to flee to a different location miles away with the child, he said.

Walters and others will evaluate the team's performance at the mock drill to see if it meets national standards.

The accreditation procedure is a learning experience so that agencies don't repeat mistakes in investigations from past cases, he said.

The process for forming the team took nearly two years, with a training session in federal standards for child abduction investigations in Albuquerque about a year ago.

Gilbert Police Chief Tim Dorn said he is proud of Detectives Ralph Cornejo and Deb Hartin, the driving forces behind forming the team.

"The goal is clear: do everything you can to bring that child back alive," Dorn said. "You don't care about the checkbook. You don't care about who gets the credit."

Dorn and other police officers said they are training for a worst-case scenario that they hope never occurs, but based on past cases, they know it's inevitable.

In addition to the ongoing Shockley case, Mesa was thrust into the national spotlight more than a decade ago when Mikelle Biggs, 11, disappeared on Jan. 2, 1999. Police were hampered by a lack of witnesses and physical evidence, with only two quarters and the girl's bicycle recovered a few yards from the Biggs family's central Mesa home.

Mikelle's body has never been recovered and an arrest has never been made in her presumed abduction and murder. Police say a convicted sex offender who lived in the neighborhood is the most likely suspect and is serving a 187-year prison sentence for sexual assault.

Gilbert used some of the federal procedures about two weeks ago, when a teenage girl was reported missing in The Islands. Officers were posted at all exits from the master-planned community to look for the girl.

But in the end, a neighbor told police that they had seen the girl walking in the neighborhood and she was recovered unharmed.

Arizona Department of Corrections K-9 Freddy finds volunteer Kennadie during an October exercise at Freestone Park in Gilbert. Officers from multiple East Valley agencies participated Child Abduction Response Team drill.

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Gilbert police Detective Ralph Cornejo wasn't happy with his department's response to an abducted-child call four years ago.

The mistakes in the case didn't matter because the call turned out to be a hoax. But Cornejo knew that a time likely will come when a child really is missing and any delay or error in the investigation could cost a young life.

"It wasn't handled very well," said Cornejo, 43. "It was really a blessing. It gave us the idea that we need to prepare for this."

So, Cornejo became the driving force behind the new Child Abduction Response Team, which combines the resources of 14 law-enforcement agencies to help investigate child-abduction cases.

He said the task force works in a support role, helping the agency investigating the abduction. The extra help is crucial because in abductions that end in homicides, 76 percent of victims are killed within three hours of their disappearance, according to national studies.

Cornejo said the team acts as a "72-hour band-aid" until federal investigators arrive.

"We're getting better as we keep doing it," said Cornejo, a police officer for 14 years and a detective for 6 1/2 years. Cornejo, who started his career with the Apache Junction police and joined Gilbert in 2005, specializes in child-abuse and sex crimes.

"The standard reaction is, you want to break their face," he said. "You have to keep a calm head and keep the big picture in mind. The big picture is putting people away for a long time."